The evironmental impacts of Formula 1 are being discussed a lot these days. So is F1 environmentally friendly sport ? Hell no. And does that make me feel sick ? Hell no again … There are things that make me sick much more …

The debate over the Formula 1 night race in Singapore is a prime example. People love to slam the night race shouting loud about all the energy that will be needed to light up the streets. Yes, Singapore power grid will probably have to provide more power that weekend than on normal weekends. How much more that I do not know, I have no numbers. But I doubt it is more than what for example football stadiums around Europe use over a weekend of evening matches. There is one night F1 race a year now, there may be few more. But there are football games almost everyday now and no one seems to care about the energy used for those lights … (don’t take me wrong, I love football). Add to it all the indoor lit up and airconditioned or frozen arenas where basketball, ice hockey and other sports are played on daily basis. How is that any better than F1 night race ?

Take the cross country skiing events now held in cities like Dusseldorf or Prague where all the snow had to be trucked from countryside or mountains far away … That makes me sick, not the lights in Singapore …

Now look at the Olympics madness. That event is just one massive drain on resources and for what ? So people can count medals that are often just products of pharmaceutical and chemical labs … The original Olympic ideas are long gone anyway, so what is all that theatre about anyway. Money … How is F1 any worse than Olympic games … Anyway, keep them on if people enjoy them. But what about this totally stupid idea of the World Olympic Torch Jet Tour ? A special plane keeps jetting around the globe to carry a flame, so few people can under police protection run few metres with a torch in hand (while others are being arrested by police) before flying it again to another city … They will cover 137,000 kilometers, how many of those km will people actually run ? I haven’t seen anything more silly than this in a very long time … This:

and this:

makes me sick … Not the lights on for 3 days in Singapore.

And what about all the damages the money driven biofuel global fiasco has caused ? Shortages of food, food prices rising to dangerous levels in places that no one wishes any unrest to begin, loss of hundreds of thousands hectares of rainforest causing more carbon emisions than burning fossil fuels does … But to grow corn for ethanol brings more cash than growing rice or wheat for people to eat, so there we go … We rush into biofuels before we know how to make them work for us and not against us. This makes me sick … Not those lights on for 3 days in Singapore …

End of the angry rant caused by the Olympic torch report I saw earlier today in the news.

As one who loves all motorsports it always amazes me of the simplistic duplicity of some of the sports detractors because of the misguided notion it, of ALL sports, wastes more fuel and resources than any other.

Almost without exception when I enter a debate with some of these moonbats I ask which sports they do support, the answer runs the gamut of all of them. Except motorsports, with no apologies given despite the reality “their” sport wastes as much or more than racing.

Plain douchebags are everywhere..they’ll interfere in any sport trying to prove treehuggers are cool, where in fact their priorities are all messed up.

F1 does indeed plays a positive role in improving ever important automobile transportation technology. It consistently creates technological concepts which will be transfered to the regular automobiles later.

The challenges of the sport will spark new concepts to improve the efficiency of motor vehicles, thus providing a great platform to increase the environmental sustainability.. Clearly 3 night-races couldn’t reverse that…

” And as a little side note what about the 100,000 Singaporians that will turn up to the race instead of being at home burning lights, watching tv and cooking spicy noodles, surely that will offset a large portion of the power used for the race! LOL. ”

… and more importantly, they will probably not have that many air-cons on

When I read this in my email today I almost dropped my blackberry. Wow, 10 out of ten on the ‘rant’scale.

I’m not one to jump on the environmental bandwagon and have never been impressed by radical environmental groups, but I do my part to be environmentally friendly. I do agree with a lot of what you say, but my feeling is when environmental groups grab hold of something they are so attached to the single cause they forget about everything else.

I see no problem with night races and the lights, never have. In my twisted sense, I sort of see a point being made about F1. On one hand you have F1 trying to brand themselves as progressing more toward being environmentally friendly, but on the other hand they hold a night race that contradicts what they want to be portrayed and that’s what is seen in the small picture.

I believe what you say because looking outside of the box is best as they say.

I hear you on that one Wolf and completely agree. The stuff about F1 not being environmentally friendly is rediculous and you pointed out many sports that are as bad, not to mention the business…and how many of the people who complain opt to bike instead of drive a car, quit smoking, using TV, microwaves and computers, buy more expensive but more evironmentally friendly food products, stop using make-up, hair spray, or drink coke out of a can, save on electricity at home etc?

The environmental issues are not really taken that serious and if they need to be, they should be in everything, not just the things that are convident to rant about because they don’t involve yourself.

As far as I am concerned I say either make the environmental a principle cause of emergency the makes it illegal to hurt the environment so that the big business that hurt the environment the most can not do so…or else leave the issue alone and lets see some racing

WTF…why don’t we implement environmentally friendly rules by enforcing fuel efficiency (say 20mpg), ultra low emissions, noise restriction, and tires made of hemp. We could all enjoy the race with tofu’ and edimami beans (actually I like edimami beans, however you spell them). We could sit on our blankets, using cloth napkins and silverware instead of plastic so we don’t fill our landfills.

Then we could all take a nap halfway through the race…won’t that be lovely.

Now that I have that out of my system, I think I will drive the 12mpg Suburban to work tomorrow to get back on track.

biofuels work in Brazil due to the climates ability to grow sugar. Unfortunately, sugar can not be grown in many regions, including here in the states. They are trying to use corn, but it takes 1 gallon of gasoline to produce 1.5 gallons of biofuel. It just doesn’t work.

Racing is about speed. Audi made diesels work in LeMans because of fuel efficiency, I don’t see that happening in F1 for the foreseeable future. The great thing about racing is that the technology used is passed on to daily use. I don’t think we need to force that in the direction of energy savings, it will get there by itself.